July 21, 2008

As the final week begins, I've noticed the strangest thing--we've actually gotten through to these kids! I'm speaking academically, in this case. Today, I was reading a story about how Egyptians kept cool in the desert. After reading, we did another Venn diagram. Immediately after I asked people to contribute, they began throwing out information we had done last week, discussing food. They remembered things that even I had forgotten. Despite the fact that they didn't start off doing what I asked of them, they were still able to recall information we covered a week beforehand! I was pleased.

I find teaching phonics extraordinarily frustrating. Every day, the teachers rotate who leads which learning station, and this time I was placed in the phonics section. For some reason, going "aaa. aaa." over and over is very difficult for me to do. I still have trouble stepping outside of my "adult mind" and into the shoes of someone learning English for the first time, or at least learning how words are constructed. That's the irony, I suppose--the simplest concepts are the most difficult to express. I'm unsure of my feelings on the Whole Language vs. Phonics debate, because in this class we completely on phonics, but I'd definitely be interested in seeing/trying to incorporate whole language into my own approach towards teaching.

On a more positive note, I'm finding a way around my personal dislike of math. I remember on one of the first days, one of the boys said to me, "Man, this math is so boring!" I almost wanted to say, "I know, right!" But instead I tried to rephrase the instructions in the book, which really didn't do much since I was just paraphrasing something already boring. After seeing what Ms. von Furt did with other children, I've eventually learning how to incorporate real-life examples to get kids to care about math. This worked especially when Ahmed and Barney started doing word problems. At first, they complained and said they couldn't think of anything. I finally thought of a good example:

"Ok, Ahmed, let's say you, Barney and your two sisters and brother are going to the mall."
"I hate going to the mall. I hate going out with my sisters."
"Ok. Let's say after you get there, you and Barney run away to play soccer in the field next door."
"Ok."
"How many people are left at the mall? How many people are at the soccer field?"

After counting it out in his head, he arrived at the correct answer. Barney came up with an idea on his own (inspired, I'd like to think, by my bringing up the mall), which involved buying shoes with Ahmed. I don't mean to be conceited, but I think I've come a bit far from not being able to say anything to being able to "freestyle" math problems that are fun and applicable to the kids' lives. (NOTE: Barney seemed to really like the word problem that involved him having three girlfriends, hilariously enough.)